


Mayday

by TLvop



Category: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Alternate Universe - Detective Noir, Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Case Fic, Gen, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-09
Updated: 2015-10-09
Packaged: 2018-04-25 11:14:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4958335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TLvop/pseuds/TLvop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luther's in trouble. In four different universes, the team goes to save him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mayday

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Samuraiter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Samuraiter/gifts).



1\. 

The phone rang shrill enough to wake King Arthur, or at least Rip Van Winkle. On the third or fourth ring, it was answered.

"Hello?" said the man who did the answering. He was unremarkable in almost every way. He was shorter than usual, maybe, but with all the bearing of a former military officer. That bearing was obvious, even as he stood by himself in a nearly bare office.

"Is this Mr. Hunt, the investigator?" The voice on the line was quiet, middle-aged, and female. It was matter of fact, but a little out of breath.

"Yeah, and who's this?"

"I was given a message for you. A guy named Stickell sends his regards about the death of your sister, and he's going to have to miss the funeral seeing as his mom's got pneumonia or something."

The figure of the man had stiffened, then relaxed. He pulled out a stenographer's pad, and sat at the desk. "Are you sure it was pneumonia? Did he say anything else?"

"Pneumonia," the voice repeated, firmer. "He said he'd be sending -- oh!"

The speaker had dropped the phone, and the sound of it hitting the wall was loud in Hunt's ear. Everything else was silence. Still, he stayed on the line until it was replaced on its cradle.Then he set his own phone down.

He tore off the sheet with the notes, folded it in half, and slipped it into his metal cigarette case. After a moment he returned to the case, removed a half-smoked cigarette, and tucked it unlit into the corner of his mouth.

He turned in his chair and frowned into late afternoon sunlight glaring through his window. Stickell was good at his job, and not keen on asking for help. Especially not help from outside the Bureau of Investigations. But there it was.

He chewed a long moment more, then stood up and grabbed his overcoat in one swift movement. He glanced at his watch, as if to confirm something he already knew, and left -- pausing only long enough to lock the door behind him.

 

 

There were a lot of joints to get beer if you were a fed, with prohibition lifted, but only one that Jane Carter and her men frequented. Probably because none of the other agents did.

Carter technically wasn't an agent - secretary, or something like that, to keep the taxpayers happy. Hunt had never seen a secretary take down three opponents unarmed, but that's how it stood. She was an experienced secretary, at least, if hot-headed when it came to personal loyalties.

Cigarette now lit, Hunt leaned against the exterior wall of Brummen's, and waited. He didn't have to wait long.

"Ethan Hunt," a man in his early 40s said, spotting him. Will Brandt, Carter's point man, was a different story. Where Carter was hot, he was as frozen as an Alaskan lake on Christmas. Still, he'd done Hunt more than one favor in the past, once he'd analyzed every reason the plan in place was wrong.

The man he'd been talking to was Benny Dunn, an exuberant Englishman who handled radio and phone-tapping. He wasn't a planner, but he could follow plans put in front of him with a little hand holding. Hunt liked him.

"Where's Carter?" Hunt straightened. He snuffed his cigarette, and put it back in its case.

Benny and Brandt exchanged glances. "Didn't you hear, Ethan?" Benny asked, even though it was clear Hunt hadn't. "She's having a --"

Brandt held a hand up slightly, to stop Benny from continuing. "Carter's on leave. What're you looking for, Hunt?"

"To hire you for a job," he said, and tipped his head towards the bar. "Should you choose to accept."

2.

Will stood by the table, crossing and uncrossing his arms as he half-listened to the muffled conversations through the closed door. Brummen's was a bar in the warehouse district of Google NNW, an area not dangerous to people as consistently good with bribes as he and Hunter were. Mostly, Will watched Hunter watch Benji, who watched the screen of his Net Port.

"So, let me be clear," he said, and Hunter's gaze turned from Benji to him. "You got a series of trigger phrases embedded in some code Luther designed specifically for you, and -- what, someone just wiped them out?"

"That's what it looks like."

"It's completely clean," Benji agreed. "Nothing out of the ordinary." He glanced at Hunter and hurriedly added " _Now_ ," as if to assure him he believed this story of their exemplary coworker bypassing all agreed-upon channels for making contact to instead reach out to an agent who'd retired himself from the field.

The problem was, Will believed it too.

Hunter and Luther had been field agents with the IMF before the Sino-Russian conglomerates and the American corporations forced them and any other government-based agency to either privatize under contract or disappear. That was the "ghost protocol" that the IMF still functioned under, with Benji and Will only active field agents in this coda to the organization that had spent so many decades sabotaging global takeover.

"Okay," Will said, and sighed. He grabbed a chair, and spun it around, sitting across from Hunter. He leaned his arms on the backrest. "What were the triggers?"

"You tell me where Luther is," Hunter said, and smiled, to take the threat out of the words, "and I'll tell you what they mean."

Will studied him. He'd studied Hunter a million times. The man was a legend, and incredibly frustrating, and while everything so far had turned up okay he never seemed more than two steps away from betrayal. He looked fine by visual inspection. Will took out his Olfactis, sprayed it in his mouth, and waited for it to kick in. He didn't stop watching Hunter as he felt his extra sensors -- biosynthetic, not electronic -- sting as they became live.

He breathed deep, the well-developed breath of wine connoisseurs and interrogators both. There was no trace of biological modifiers. The only strong scent in the air was fear -- Benji's -- a familiar tang that likely registered more growing social panic than true distress. Hunter was the essence of calm collection in scent, his frustration at Will only visible on his face. The man was a sociopath, probably. The rumors said he was a robot illegally commissioned by Phelps, back when IMF was legitimate and had resources, but everyone knew advanced AI weren't stable long-term. And Hunter had been around long-term. He'd even had a wife. So, Hunter was a friendly sociopath, and nothing worse, even if his scent never changed.

Will breathed out, and decided to trust his past experience. He or Benji might die in the process, but Hunter would finish the job.

"Luther's been placed in a long-term assignment with Apple-Foxconn. He's monitoring several projects, including the development of mind-erasure technology."

"Specifically the type that's a little more … discerning about what it's erasing," Benji jumped in.

Hunter looked between them. "Luther's not in Infiltration.”

"See, that's the thing." Benji scratched the back of his neck. "To get the right sort of intel, we needed someone with access to the --" he launched into a series of words Will had heard a few dozen times but still couldn't exactly make sense of "-- and that's not something you can _fake_. I mean," he breathed a laugh, "I could've done it instead, but Luther's got a personal pride thing going on with the Markovnikov method, doesn't he?"

"Yeah," Will and Hunter said in unison, having caught a name they'd heard before. They exchanged a look.

"All right," Hunter said. "He's in danger. He hasn't been made as an IMF operative, but he has reason to believe an assassin wants to take him out after he finishes this project for Apple-Foxconn. He's already taken measures to ensure his project won't be finished for 24 hours -- 22 now -- but he can't stall longer. I didn't get his location or the identity of the assassin. I'll go in as --"

One of Benji's devices had gone off.

"Oh, fuck," Benji said, slamming his hand down on it. "Huang says we've got the Cia incoming."

Hunter and Will jumped to their feet, and Benji hurriedly started to gather his technology.

"What _happened_?" Will said, as the boots of See-Yas sounded in the hallway. "Brummen's is _safe_."

"Nowhere's safe," Benji spit out, irritated. The first shot rattled the room, but didn't take out the door. Once it warmed up, the next shot would.

"Go," Hunter said, "I'll meet you at the rendezvous."

Will gave him his spare mags before grabbing one of Benji's bags and covering their tail on the way out. They hadn't made it far through the smugglers tunnel when the sounds of a fight broke out.

The effects of the Olfactis were still strong enough that Will could smell Benji as if he'd actually gotten sick, regret curdling the air, but the other man moved - if anything - faster.

They almost made it to the end of the tunnel before two followers rounded the corner. Will took them out. They'd managed to get past Hunter… Will felt a little sick himself.

3.

Engineer Benjamin Dunn looked back and forth between the door and the sensors in front of him, tapping his fingers against the wood paneling. "We shouldn't have left him there, sir," he said, the title a last-second addition. The crew was very informal, as was common for Treasury boats, but there was something to be said for being polite when you were angry.

"What, and disobey orders, Ben?" Captain Brandt asked, hands going to into the air. He didn't stop pacing. "He's the _Major_."

"He'll be here, though," Ben said, changing tack as much to reassure himself as the captain. "He said he'd be here, so he has to be here. I mean, Major Ethan Hunt, not making it to his own ship? That'd be preposterous, that'd be…" he trailed off, and sighed.

The captain checked his timepiece, and headed to the door to sweep the decks. "If he isn't here in two minutes, I'll go find him. Can you keep us in ready-to-fly condition by yourself?"

"Of course," Ben said. He was only a little offended – the captain did this sort of thing, when he was nervous. Ben had learned to live with it.

The door banged open just before Brandt reached it, causing him to jump backward and draw his gun. In the doorway stood Major Hunt, soaked through and less a greatcoat, eyes glittering and grin large on his face.

It was terrifying, and very familiar. Ben returned the smile, somewhat nervous.

"Major." The captain didn't sound nervous at all, just tired. He returned his pistol to its holster. "You found something?" He went to find the medical kit.

"Set course for New Jersey." The major breathed in, before pronouncing as he closed the door: "West Orange."

Ben startled slightly. "The Edison Centers?"

"They're planning a break-in. We're going to catch them before they get there."

 

 

As prophecies went, there had been more accurate. They found the airship they were looking for _at_ Edison Center West, and pulling up anchor. The lights on the Edison Center were out, though there were flashes as if from a stuttering steam generator.

"Pull alongside them," the captain murmured. "Maybe we can see Stickell."

Ben hummed quietly as he complied, carefully keeping out of sight of the men boarding. The ship in question was well-armored, which meant it couldn't have much in the way of sensors.

The major had acquired a new coat and a pair of pistols.

"There he is," Ben said. Then, faster: "They're starting up the engines!"

"Where?" The major grabbed the spyglass Brandt was using and leaned into the viewing window. "I see you," he murmured to himself before handing it back.

Hunt grabbed one of the anchor guns, already loosening his belt, and headed out the door. "Stay on them, Ben!"

"I'm not going to be --" the door closed. "Able to," he muttered, and turned his focus onto doing it anyway.

"He's going to jump," the captain said. "Abseil. "

"I know."

"From here to there.There being a tank ship," the captain added.

"I _know_."

The captain nodded once, then nodded again, then went to provide covering fire.

4.

Brummen's was okay, as bars went. Luther liked them classier, but he wasn't the crazy genius who'd just jumped between helicopters to get him out of a jam.

The conversation had fallen into an easy quiet, the post-debrief exhaustion starting to seep in.

"It's nice of you guys to invite me," Carter said, muddying her spicy tomato juice before taking a sip. From how Brandt and Dunn tried not to treat her delicately, and the fact that Luther knew she was a bourbon gal, and the way Ethan had been sliding his eyes over her and to the next person – well, Luther's not one to suppose, and definitely not one to consider a woman's looks while supposing – but he figured it'd be safe to say the reason she'd stayed home wasn't because she'd let herself go soft.

"Well, _yeah_ ," Dunn said, making a _pfff_ noise as he gestured with his drink. "We're a team, aren't we?"

Luther laughed, quiet. Dunn wasn't wrong. He raised his drink. "To teams."

Ethan smirked slightly, eyes crinkling as he tapped his glass into Luther's. "To teams."

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to write the fic including Carter as an active participant, but couldn't manage four identities of five characters so fell back to your request list -- I hope it doesn't feel too forced!
> 
> Thank you to Kerioth & FiKate for being awesome betas.


End file.
